Dr Mandana Ahmadi, the founder and CEO of mental health app Alena, discusses how technology can be a tool to support mental health, her journey as an Iranian immigrant to a UK-based startup founder, and how artificial intelligence is yet to replicate real human emotion.
Ahmadi moved to the UK from Iran with a joint passion for technology and psychology. London-headquartered Alena is harnessing computational neuroscience to decode the mental patterns that drive social anxiety.
It has raised $3.6m in funding since it was co-founded by Ahmadi in 2019. Before Alena, she co-founded and served as CTO for TAINA Technology, a regulatory technology company that helped financial institutions comply with requirements.
Elsewhere on the show, the Alena founder and UKTN Podcast host Jane Wakefield discuss the limits of AI and how we “might know more about the nature around us or the physics of the universe than we know about the biological brain”.
Listen to the full episode here, along with all previous episodes of the UKTN Podcast.
This season, the UKTN Podcast is speaking to key tech stakeholders in addition to founders of high-growth startups. Tune in every Tuesday for new episodes and don’t forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts.
The UKTN Podcast is sponsored by Sage.